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Islandia

Maria Negroni

Issue 130, Spring 1994

I

No one said the spasm of battle would last forever. Nor asked: Is there a violence sadder than the word island? Said: you have found a ruse and will reinvent it forever. Swords will continue to cams from sheaths, the crest will lodge the fiery moon and from now on a tangled mass of sails will signify exalted impatience, not the traditional annoyance of fear. But one avarice will be fruitless: nostalgia. So it was said. The men did not know how to answer. With the tip of the tongue they retrieved a tear, salt as the sea.

Il

As if a single voice pierced every one of them, their hidden sides, sordid, their impudence in remaining utterly ignorant of happiness, of postponing it, thus they live. They know the modesty of saying I, but prefer the amplitude of this night or the supposed song of the only nightingale they have ever heard or will hear, which does not differ from silence. They know, too, the exact measure of some riddles that they will not be able to solve: why certain parts of the body are like countries and others like prison cells, why courage and naiveté form a constellation. In that discretion which is also a form of order (but less innocent) there is a flirtation with the implicit, the remote hope that, seen from afar, their gestures will be rounded into completion (meaning). In one gulp, they have swigged down summer. Suddenly, they seem tired. Something tells them rain is coming.